Video: Creating memory locations

In their simplest form, a Memory Location can simply be a marker used to denote the beginning or ending of a musical section. However, Memory Locations can be used for so much more as you'll see here. There are several ways to create a Memory Location. You can hit the Enter key in the numeric keypad or in Pro Tools you can click this little plus sign in the Markers ruler. If Pro Tools is stopped, the Memory Location is placed at the current cursor position. However, if Pro Tools is playing or recording, Pro Tools will place a memory location right where the cursor is located without stopping playback or record. This is called dropping in a memory location on the fly and let's try it right now. (Music playing.) So there you go, we just dropped in the bass in Memory Location at bar 3 and we did it on the fly. Let's open up that marker. I'm going to double-click to open the Edit Memory location window.

Pro Tools 8 Essential Training unveils the inner workings of the industry-standard software for music and post-production. Musician, producer, and educator David Franz demonstrates all the concepts and techniques necessary for recording, editing, mixing, and mastering in Pro Tools 8. He teaches how to create music with virtual instruments and plug-ins, edit with elastic audio for time and pitch manipulation, create a musical score, and mix with effects loops. This course can help any music producer, sound engineer, or hobbyist become proficient in Pro Tools 8. Exercise files accompany the course.

Creating memory locations

In their simplest form, a Memory Location can simply be a marker used to denotethe beginning or ending of a musical section. However, Memory Locations can beused for so much more as you'll see here. There are several ways to create aMemory Location. You can hit the Enter key in the numeric keypad or in Pro Toolsyou can click this little plus sign in the Markers ruler.If Pro Tools is stopped, the Memory Location is placed at the current cursorposition. However, if Pro Tools is playing or recording, Pro Tools will placea memory location right where the cursor is located without stoppingplayback or record. This is called dropping in a memory location on the fly andlet's try it right now. (Music playing.)So there you go, we just dropped in the bass in Memory Location at bar 3 andwe did it on the fly. Let's open up that marker. I'm going to double-click toopen the Edit Memory location window.

In this window, we've got a lot of options. Let's start with the TimeProperties. A marker recalls a particular location in the timeline in yoursession. The playback cursor immediately moves to the marker's location whenyou recall a marker memory location. Markers are referenced either to bar andbeat or absolute time. When you choose Bar|Beat, it's tick based and in thisparticular case, we have a Bar| Beat marker and it is at bar 3 beat 1.If I change the tempo for this Bar| Beat marker, the marker will follow thetempo change. However, if I chose Absolute for this marker, the marker will beset in an absolute time and will be sample based. If I change the tempo, themarker will not move.

As we can see over here, markers appear in the Markers ruler within yellowlines extending all the way down through the Edit window. This is helpful inediting and aligning track material. Additionally, they have differentappearances depending on whether they are Absolute or Bar|Beat markers. Here isthe Bar|Beat marker, here is an Absolute marker. This one's a diamond. The other one's a yellow chevron.Let's go back to the Time Properties. If we chose Selection, that's differentthan a marker. A selection memory location stores a highlighted area in yoursession, like 4 bars in a song's verse. Like markers, selections can bereferenced either as Bar|Beat or as Absolute.

A third memory location option, None, recalls no time properties and isreferred to as a general properties memory location. I'll show you more aboutthis type in a moment.Let's move down to the General Properties. Zoom settings recall the horizontaland vertical zoom values for both audio and MIDI tracks. This option is veryuseful in switching between totally zoomed in and zoomed out views whileediting. Pre and Post Roll Times recall pre and post roll times in theTransport window but don't indicate whether they are actually enabled.

This option is used for when recording multiple takes of a solo or a vocal part. Track Show/Hide recalls which tracks are shown or hidden in the session.Use this property to display specific tracks for editing and mixing. It's greatto use this in mixing so you can focus on specific groups of tracks likeshowing all of the drums or just the guitars.Track Heights recalls all the track heights in the session. This is even morepowerful when using it in tandem with the zoom settings for editing tasks.

Group Enables recalls which edit and mix groups are enabled and WindowConfiguration recalls any saved window configuration that you have got in yoursession. Here I have got two different ones and those two show different setupson your screen of the Edit window, the Mix window, and any other windows that are open.Finally, below that we have the Comment section, where you can type comments upto 255 characters long. A cool detail about this is that the comment shows upwhen you mouse over the markers in the Markers ruler. Let me cancel this for asecond. And we'll look at the Memory Locations window. You can open the MemoryLocations window by choosing the Window > Memory Locations.

In this window, we see all of the memory locations here. We have got a numberof markers, a selection and our general properties memory location. When youare working in a session with a lot of memory locations, it's useful to keepthe Memory Locations window open at almost all times. Let me click through afew of these memory locations I have got.So here's the Start marker, you can see that a few things are saved with this.We have Zoom Settings and we have the Track Show/Hide and Track View, and theWindow Configurations. Let's check out a few of the other ones. Here is theSitar Enters marker. You see that we have different Zoom Settings and Track Views.

Let's go further down, we'll zoom back out for the Break marker.Let's check out a selection memory location. If we click there we can see thatalthough there is no marker, we do have a selection and that is a selection onthe Organ track here. Now let's check out a general properties memory location,the Mini Grand Zoom and that's zoomed in very largely on the Mini Grand MIDI track here.So we go back to the Start that zooms us all the way back out. So it's prettycool to be able to switch between these different memory locations for zoomlevels and track heights and all that stuff. Makes it easy for editing and for song organization.

Another feature of the Memory Locations window is the menu right over herewhere we can filter out what we see in the Memory Locations window. We can showcounters so we can see where the actual marker takes place. We can see thecomments if we want to and we can add new memory locations, we can edit them,clear them, delete them and a few other options here.One last thing, I want to mention is that you can use keyboard shortcuts to goto memory locations. If you go to Setup > Preferences and if you go into theOperation side here we can go to the Numeric Keypad. If we set the NumericKeypad to Classic, then all you need to do is hit a number and then the periodin the numeric keypad and that will take you to any of the memory locations.

If you set the Numeric Keypad to Transport, then you need to hit the period, thenumber in the numeric keypad and then the period again and that will take youto a memory location.So now you know everything there is to know about memory locations. Use them toquickly organize, navigate and edit your Pro Tools sessions.

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